This part of the book explains the core concepts behind CVS, and describes the commands most people will use on a day-to-day basis. All CVS users should be familiar with the topics covered in this part of the book. Part II consists of the following chapters:

This chapter explains the everyday CVS commands and concepts, the ones that almost everyone who uses CVS will need. Each command is accompanied by an example and a description of the most commonly used options to the command.

Commands in this chapter include add, remove, commit, and update. Concepts covered include the CVS repository and sandboxes, conflicts and merges, using CVS with binary files, and switching repositories.

Tagging, branching, and merging branches back to the trunk are closely related topics. This chapter explains tagging and branching, including why and when to tag or branch your project, tagging before releases, and using branching to create a bugfix version of a project.

This chapter explains the systems used in CVS to permit multiple developers to work on the same project without loss of data. For example, it discusses the commands available for displaying changes to files.